I am at a crowded, noisy party. I press through the people to get to the bathroom and enter a small door in the corner of the sunken den with my companion. The door closes behind us. It is now locked and there is no knob and no apparent way to get back out. The wall board in the tiny, unfurnished room shows signs of water damage. We find another small door at the rear of the room. Through it, I find I am now barefoot in a large locker- room. There are peeing troughs in the cement floor, so I do. We step out into a classroom. Somehow I know that we have time-traveled and must discreetly discover what year it is. I make up a little rhyme with "1992" and encourage another classmate to try one. He looks at me blankly and writes the year on a piece of paper, handing it to me. At first glance it looks like "7132", but looking closer I see it is "1974". I lament out loud that I must now take all those classes over again. I also begin to wonder if I have ever existed. I walk outside and find some women sitting around a campfire by a clothesline. D, and old girlfriend, is among them and they all admire her clear skin. I feel remorse. I find my truck and drive west through the town. I park at the curb in front of a leaf-strewn house. As I get out, I dislodge some metal tabs from the door and I try, clumsily, several times to fix them. It now appears that instead I am parked in the breezeway of a house. The mustached, Hispanic owner and his young daughter peer out at me through the front window. He's mad. I ask him what time it is. It is 6 am. I am able to make peace with him and we swap some trinkets. He gives me a small plastic monkey. Knowing how he loves key chains, I give him a little skeleton key chain. I manage to find G again and I tell her, "Lets not separate again - it's too incredibly lonely." We locate our room and crawl into bed. We have a golden bedspread. The wardrobe at the foot of the bed starts to come apart. People come out of the wall and ceiling behind it: a red-haired, bearded guy and our friends, R and J. They carry newborn triplets. Now I know this is an alternate dimension. One of the kids is already waist high and talking to me: "How're you doing?"

Halloween came early this year when our own JCC submitted this piece of Napkin Art inviting our corpulent publisher to taste his own untimely doom. Go ahead, Carl. Have a hotdog and let us drain the tallow from your lifeless, flapping jowls. Plus, we all want raises.